Looking from Canada to the United States, across Niagara's Horseshoe Falls

Thursday, February 2, 2012

New novel remembers the Niagara Ice Bridge disaster of 1912

It was a hundred years ago, on Feb.4, 1912 - in an era when thousands of winter visitors still regularly walked out onto the Niagara River Ice Bridge - that three people died when the Ice Bridge suddenly broke apart, stranding them on ice floes, which began moving downriver. Despite efforts to save them, the three perished in the Niagara River rapids.

At the time of the ice break-up, as people scrambled to reach shore, a married couple, the Stantons, were struggling to make their way off the cracking ice; a teen-ager named Burrell Hecock valiantly decided he would help them, but in doing so, became trapped alongside them when the ice shifted again, sealing their fate.

Writer Noni Gross, a relative of Burrell Hecock, is working on a new graphic novel based on this tragic event; visit http://hecocknovel.wordpress.com/ to see her novel in progress, with more twists and turns than the Niagara River! It's historical fiction with a touch of futuristic Steampunk gadgetry.